Sins of Ubuntu or Accusers ?

Read:

• http://www.osnews.com/story/24803/The_Sins_of_Ubuntu

Empirical facts, rather than hear say fictions are critical in the age of misinformation. Good article by OSNews to dispel the much crazy criticism that we hear. It's not just criticising Ubuntu, but Linux as a whole. Indeed, Linux have it's weaknesses, but much of the misunderstanding caused by unscrupulous Marketing and PR Departments of certain twisted organisations whom only wants to restrict people and their choices and milk their money, are getting in the way.

Why Netflix should be shunned

Read:

• http://blog.netflix.com/2010/11/netflix-on-android.html

In my opinion, the open source and supporters of Free software (as defined by FSF) should shun Netflix. Android and it's parent (Google) who supports the open source movement should steer very clear from those who promote DRMs like Netflix. It would actually be better if Netflix is never created on Linux based handsets like Android as it supports DRM, not the goal or in-line of the goals of Free software like Linux.

The Linux OS, which is an open source Free software, has been 'raped' and non-Free stuff have found it's way into Linux. This should not have been the case but it is now the case... a very sad case indeed.

Flashless Flash

We have all heard about Smokescreen which is a JavaScript/HTML 5 library that runs Flash videos without having a Flash player.

we have long known of the bad performance of Adobe Flash in Linux and Mac platforms and the troubles are never ending with Adobe doing a bad job with Flash. Just a note, whenever I have Youtube running Flash, my browsers (I am using Ubuntu 10.04) just crash. Regardless is it Firefox, Opera or Chrome... it took a dive and died.

It would be an interesting idea to implement a kind of method or plugin that would intercept demands to run Flash and swap it with Smokescreen (maybe by using the browser to internally edit it's downloaded HTML codes abit) and run Flash on Smokescreen. 

Although Smokescreen is still not really ready yet, it would be an interesting test implementation to behold.

Maybe Mozilla could donate a couple of developers to focus on helping those guys developing Smokescreen and greatly boost it's development process and quality ?

Crashy Browser

My Ubuntu 10.04 (I just upgraded recently) has been suffering web browser crashes lately and it's during the usage of the latest 10.1 Adobe Flash plugin regardless of the browsers. Sigh... when would Flash be fixed and become really robust and less buggy ?


EDIT (20 SEP 2010): I was using a Opera browser containing a tab to a normal forum without any cool html 5 features or real time apps (except Google Ads), a tab opened to "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmkH2bSOzek" and a Youtube video. The processor (An Intel Dual Core, Compaq Presario C700 on an Ubuntu 10.04) sees the processor shoot up to 94% for Opera (in total when considering the two processor usage). Wow... that's a lot of processing usage. I only use Opera because it has a very clean and nice interface, serves HTML 5 and the killer Mail application in-built into it so I can avoid signing into webmails as much as possible to save my time. Since Opera 10.60 is weighing me down so badly on performance (compared to Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 6), I may ditch Opera soon if it continues. For managing my webmails, I have my own ways.... else I just well... suck it up, right ?     :S


Opera 10.60 ratings for now: :( :(  - Don't force me to add another 'bad' smiley !!!

Choking up on Flash

Opera have made impressive efforts improving it's browser in 10.60 but sadly, it has not properly address fundamental issues of crashing and jamming like what Chrome did. I couldn't say Chrome is any better when it comes to being crashy (although it 'safely' handles crashes). Unlike Chrome, Opera just colour your desktop with the most beautiful jam your ever seen. Take a look at the two screen shots of a jammed Opera running on Ubuntu.

Do not that I have taken out some information to protect my own privacy.

As I am typing below these texts after uploading these pictures, Opera starts to kick up some fuss and hiccups abit. Bad Opera !!


Apparently, it's partly Google's fault for not making some of their applications friendly to Opera.


Why I have been using Opera lately is because it has a mail integration where I could simply check my mail without going to the webmail sites. Guess I am too lazy ain't I ? Lol.


Now back to topic. Flash 10.1(Adobe official version) is still kicking up lots of fuss, jamming my web browsers when I start to load 3 to 4 tabs worth of Youtube (each 10 minutes long) while paused each video. It happens to Firefox, Chrome and Opera... giving me such a nasty headache.


Opera gives the most headache and pain as you can see from the above screenshots. Not only does it hang, it literally 'colour your desktop' nicely. :D


Good job Opera. You made my day. I sent to the Opera team two issue tickets but I never got to hear anything from them forever. I know, they are busy with tons of other bugs which are more important then mine.


Well, this is a rant about bad web browsers and nasty official Adobe Flash 10.1 running on Linux. Adobe really haven't put enough efforts to make it's products competent on Linux as you can from the all so frequent crashes of Flash on Linux platform although Adobe market themselves as competent on Linux as well. it's time Adobe should get serious with making user experience really good and sleek on Linux or people would still be complaining about them.

Google's 2 OSes

Google have made two different OSes so far. One of them is the infamous Android and the other is the still in development Chrome OS. Both OSes are based on Linux.


Why don't Google reuse the already well-liked and infamous Android OS and modify it for desktop and netbook usage rather then reinventing the wheel, spawning the Chrome OS ? If Google really wanted Android OS to have the Chrome browser-like feel which Chrome OS is using, they could simply write some sort of layer over Android like what other Android mods have done (customizing their Android mods).


By choosing just Android to work with and having a desktop / netbook Chrome-like feel mod, all they need to do is focus on one single OS and that's all they need. 


Splitting attention between two OSes can sap a lot of resources and attention. Logically speaking, Chrome OS would have a high possibility of being discarded sooner or later because the amount of attention and resource being sapped from maintaining two OSes is quite a lot, even for a huge company like Google.


Google, please think twice. It's not late to give up on Chrome OS and create a mod for Android to run a Chrome-like desktop/netbook OS.

Failed to install Chrome Beta (Linux)

Google have recently announced a beta official Chrome browser for Linux (and Mac too). I thought I should take a look at how well done it is. I downloaded the beta's 32 bit deb file (Ubuntu/Debian installer) for my Linux Mint 7 (base on Ubuntu Intrepid) and it quickly threw an error saying that the installer is either corrupted or my permissions couldn't open it. I set the permissions to allow execution but it still couldn't run the insaller with the same error. Good job Google.... releasing something that makes me become more disappointed with Chrome. Chrome is going to be the next worse browser after IE in my mind since I have so much bad experiences using Chrome (crashes ... badly made installers ... etc). Firefox is still better than Chrome and Arora (a webkit based browser) I found is better than Chrome (in my opinion) for now.

Here's my browser ranking according to browsers I have used:

1. Firefox (Best)
   
2. Arora
3. Opera
4. Chrome
5. IE (Worst)